instructor diaries pt1

Things Instructors get asked.

Most people doing a tandem skydive often know very little about the sport of skydiving. We’re okay with this and we love teaching them about it and answering all of their questions. Here are the most common questions our instructors get asked with the most common answers

What’s the highest you can jump from?

Well if you ask Felix Baumgartner the answer will be 39kms! But for tandem skydiving, 14-15,000ft is the highest you’ll go without requiring oxygen hook ups in the plane. Regular skydivers are often jumping from 13-14,000ft unless its for a large formation record in which case they may go to 16-19,000ft.

Do you do that wingsuit thing?

Most of our instructors either wingsuit or have tried wingsuiting yes. Wingsuit skydiving is very different to wingsuit base jumping which is what most people have in mind when they think of wingsuiting thanks to the likes of Jeb Corlis and other wanna be rockstars on YouTube.

Does it (skydiving) still feel the same for you?

For sure, after thousands of skydives it’s not the same as when you do your first. But the feeling of freedom and joy of freefall never goes away, it just gets better and better.

How many jumps do you have?

Our instructors have anyone from between 2,000 to 18,000 skydives each!

Do you do it every day?

Yep, this is our job! Living the dream.

How many times a day can you do it?

On a busy day you can do 10 skydives. If you have two parachute rigs you and someone packing your parachute for you then you could do double this.

Are you a base jumper?

About 10% of skydivers are B.A.S.E jumpers or have at least tried B.A.S.E jumping.

How come you go up when the parachute opens?

You don’t. You continue to fall, however the speed at which you fall reduces massively. If someone is filming from the outside then it gives the impression of the parachute going up when it opens because the video person is still falling at terminal velocity.

How many tandems do i have to do before i can go by myself?

One. We make our solo skydive students do a training tandem prior to their first solo skydive. This gives them a taste of what skydiving is all about, opportunity to overcome sensory overload, helps overcome fear, experience controlling and landing the parachute.

Is it hard to breath?

No, just breath normally.

How do you know when to pull?

We wear visual altimeters on our wrists and often have audible altimeters next to our ear. We’re aware of our altitude 100% of the time, without fail. We ‘pull’ at a predetermined altitude every time. For tandems, its around 5,500ft